How do I hate Ted Nugent? Let me count the ways. I hate Ted Nugent because he’s a crypto-fascist patriot (dirtiest word in the English language) Cro-Magnon who wears a loincloth. I hate Ted Nugent because he’s a Republican, although I guess I’m repeating myself. I hate Ted Nugent because he’s a symbol of cool to all those straightedge jerks too dumb to know that the road of excess leads to the palace of wino-dom.
I hate Ted Nugent because he said he found man-on-man sex repulsive (although he added he’d never judge another man’s morals) and because he proved he was an idiot by hosting his own reality show, in which he bow hunted humans in Birkenstocks. He also built an outhouse. Presumably so as to have a place more comfortable than a deer stand to write his looney-tunes political diatribes.
Now, let me count the ways I love Ted Nugent. I love Ted Nugent because he has a wife named Shemane. This is so close to Shemale as to be suspicious. I love Ted Nugent because he dodged the Vietnam War, even if this does make him a Grade A hypocrite. I love Ted Nugent because he once said, “I will personally cut off my dick and eat it! I will cut my cock off on The Ed Sullivan Show and chew on it. That is what I’ll do if the new album bombs.” I love Ted Nugent because the lead singer on Ted’s1975 solo debut Ted Nugent bears the hilarious moniker Derek St. Holmes, a name so positively Spın̈al Tap it’s uncanny. Finally, I love Ted Nugent because Ted Nugent is a most excellent record, even if (like me) you consider the Motor City Madman a poltroon.
Nugent, as everybody knows, got his start with The Amboy Dukes, the Detroit band that bequeathed us 1968’s psychedelic Meisterwerk “Journey to the Center of the Mind,” which Nugent later claimed he didn’t know was about drugs. One wonders what he thought it was about–two guys crossing the desert of Ted’s brainpan on a horse with no name? In the mid-seventies he went solo, and a Nuge was born. He began his solo career with a bang and Ted Nugent, which combined wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am sonic assaults (“Stormtroopin’” and “Motor City Madhouse”) with one prolonged guitar exploration of inner space featuring a wrestling metaphor.
Nugent may be a lot of things, but despite calling him an idiot I don’t think he’s stupid. He’s seriously misguided, has a terrible fashion sense (the headband? worse than the loincloth!), and has penned (with fawn’s blood, most likely) some crushingly dim songs. “Queen of the Forest” anybody? Or “Snake Charmer?” Oh, what am I saying? I suppose Nugent really is dumb as a stump. But he has a minor wit, and like such fellow dumb bunnies as Sammy Hagar, who wrote “Bad Motor Scooter,” and Don Brewer, who must have composed “We’re an American Band” in a fugue state, Nugent has written the occasional great song, and this is rock’n’roll we’re talking about, and not (and thank shit for it) politics.
But enough dicking around. I should add that Nugent’s band at the time included Nugent on lead and rhythm guitars, vocals, and percussion; the wonderfully named St. Holmes on lead vocals and rhythm guitar; Rob Grange on bass; and the dully named Cliff Davies on drums, vibraphone, and vocals. Steve McRay contributed keyboards and Brian Staffeld and Tom Werman played additional percussion. God, was that boring!
I may really enjoy this record, but it’s not all sweetness and light. “Where Have You Been All My Life” is a generic blues mutation that features some tasty Nugent guitar wank and not much else; the lyrics are trite and St. Holmes just keeps singing the same thing over and over until you want to tell him to put a lid on it. “You Make Feel Right at Home” is a snoozeworthy jazz canoodle complete with deceased Milt Jackson vibes and the mellow vocal stylings of drummer Davies. What it’s doing on this album is a riddle wrapped in an enigma clutched in the cold dead hands of a jazzbo. As for “Queen of the Forest,” it’s a competent song saddled with some impossibly stupid lyrics. Nugent plays tough licks throughout, and the melody’s okay if nothing great, and if I try really hard to ignore the words and just listen to the Nuge’s hunka hunka burnin’ solo all is almost well. Give me a half-hour to rewrite the lyrics, and I’ll hand you a classic!
But just when you begin to think Ted Nugent stinks the band hits you with “Motor City Madhouse,” a protopunk, super-motivatin’ rave-up sung by Nugent, complete with asides, laughs, and screams. His guitar is a blur, and St. Holmes plays some crazy rhythm guitar, and the percussion is a big Stooges shake. And it all comes to a head with a manic-impressive axe solo by Nugent, who may be a fool but ain’t foolin’. Almost as great is “Stormtroopin’,” which features a great riff and cool echoing vocals by St. Holmes, to say nothing of one very happening chorus. I love Davies’ ride cymbal and the maracas solo, which Tyrannosaurus Ted and St. Holmes follow with some fantastic guitar interplay. I’m also enamored of “Snakeskin Cowboys,” with its slow opening followed by gigantic axe riffs and big drum bash and St. Holmes’ “Ooh, snakeskin cowboys/Who the hell you think you are/You’re dancin’ around with your high-heel boots/Don’t think that should get you far/Ain’t got nothin’ on me/Just hangin’ around with your fancy pants on.” Well, I guess he told them! Meanwhile Nugent and Davies engage in some fancy pants guitar/drum interplay of their own, and I don’t know why I like this one so much except I like to imagine St. Holmes is singing about the Eagles.
“Just What the Doctor Ordered” is cool too, propulsive with more streamlined vocals by St. Holmes and one very hot guitar riff by the Motor City Motormouth. Who plays one King Hell solo mid-song, and not to change tracks in mid-sentence like a writing 8-track but this may be one of only two doctor-related songs I don’t actually loathe in the entire history of rock, along with Little Feats’ “Rock’n’Roll Doctor.” Physician-related rock songs have long been the been of my existence, from “Doctor Love” to “Doctor My Eyes” to “I Don’t Need No Doctor” to the worst of them all, “Bad Case of Loving You,” so you can’t imagine how nice it is to hear a doctor song I actually like. “Hey Baby” ain’t my favorite tune on the LP, but it’s grown on me over time. A fast-paced, finger-snapping blues, what finally won me over about it were St. Holmes’ ebullient vocals, the Nuge’s big solo turn in media res, and the song’s sheer perkiness. The damn thing bounces like a superball, thanks to lots of jolts of electricity from Herr Nugent’s Gibson Byrdland guitar.
Which leaves us with the ominous and monolithic “Stranglehold,” a song so great it made the final cut of the soundtrack to Richard Licklater’s nostalgic 1993 ode to my graduating class, Dazed and Confused. Nugent himself called it a “masterpiece of jamology,” and that’s as good a description as any. Eight-plus minutes of sinuous twists and turns, and featuring one of the greatest guitar riffs of all time—to say nothing of a long, feral guitar solo recorded in one miraculous take—“Stranglehold” is a menacing and monstrous thing. Various cool toys, such as the phase effect on Grange’s bass and the distortion that is occasionally thrown over St. Holmes’ vocals, all add to the joy, and if this isn’t Ted’s high-water mark in the music biz my name is Shemane. You can get lost in the belly of this beast, especially stoned, and I’m sure there are souls who have been wandering around in it for years, singing, “Come on, come on, come on, come on, baby, come on COME ON COME ON!”
So where does that leave me? I hate Ted Nugent and if Ted Nugent were on fire I would not piss on Ted Nugent to put Ted Nugent out. Ah, but Ted Nugent now, that’s a completely different story. I would definitely piss on Ted Nugent to put Ted Nugent out, which is to say one must always be careful to distinguish between the artist and his art, because while the former may be a walking, talking anal suppository, the latter may rock balls.
Ted Nugent is not the perfect album; I’d just as soon never hear one-third of its tracks again. But the good tracks are great tracks, and the best track is one of the most majestic sublimities of hard rock. So I’m left with a dolt in a loincloth and a headband he wears presumably to keep all the reprehensible ideas in his noggin from falling out, who just happens to have produced some really great songs. Every Christian lion-hearted man will tell you to love the sinner, hate the sin. I suppose I’ll have to be content with hating the songwriter, and loving the song. “I Love You So I Told You a Lie” featuring Meat Loaf included!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
